"Laura"

Parlophone / EMI

Artists:

When Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan released 2009's Two Suns, its lead single "Daniel" was an ode to teenage first loves and naïveté, with all its hopefulness pinned onto Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid. On "Laura", the first song offered from Bat for Lashes' third LP, The Haunted Man, Khan offers her reassurances to a friend who's been left behind, clinging to a lifestyle of parties and night flirtations when everyone else has grown up and settled down. The reassurances Khan offers this friend aren't all desirable scenarios-- what grown woman wants her name "tattooed on every boy's skin"?-- but they fit the contradiction that the titular dame embodies: wanting to cling to a scene that can't last, trying to prolong the hot flash of lust into that eternal green light across the bay. When Khan near-pleads, "You're more than a superstar," it sounds like the kind of well-meaning but empty sentiment you might impart to a weeping friend-- but the subtlety is that "Laura", whoever she is, is worth much more than validation through nightlife notoriety.